What if Australia had gotten high-speed rail?

One issue with and significant rail development in Australia is that that it should really should be proceeded by standardising the rail gauge.
 
High-speed railway is the sort of thing that should be built in South-East Australia in conjunction with some serious urban planning that places satellite cities up and down the track in order to take the population burden off of Melbourne and Sydney without asking people to move to where there are no jobs. People should be able to commute to the two big cities without having to live in/next to them. Otherwise, there is no need for it.
 

Devvy

Donor
Australia is that profitable for a high-speed railway. It is too sparse in terms of population density for any high-speed railways to be profitable.

Heavily disagree. I agree that coast-to-coast high speed rail is ludicrous; Perth to Sydney is never going to be remotely workable, but shorter routes are viable, and the air traffic control model reportedly subsidises domestic routes from international routes which skews domestic aviation costs and prices.

I think the Speedrail 1993 concept is probably closest to fruition; the proposal was backed by the Government, Sydney to Canberra is a workable short distance HSR which can safely beat the car and plane. Speedrail probably has to give more cast iron guarantees of no taxpayer funding, in return for maybe a little longer BOO model, and also the end of indirect subsidies for domestic aviation where applicable would help. Speedrail had an end to end travel time of 1:21 - something which is going to be heavily competitive after 9/11 and security checks etc (not to mention the city centre stations) - and is shorter then the flight time of 1:35 currently according to Google flights. Flight ticket prices of A$100-$150 look as though they should be beatable; a similar return train ticket of (say) A$150 for a shorter travel time, direct to the city centre, and with no security or luggage rules is going to win. You might also see Canberra Airport take up some slack from Sydney once the later becomes heavily congested too, which will entice some further traffic if some kind of air-rail codeshare can be worked out with applicable airlines.

Once you have Sydney-Canberra working and earning money, then you can separately begin to look at extending it to Melbourne, which is probably the only obvious extension which is remotely possible without government help. Brisbane & Adelaide would be nice, but construction costs are likely to far outweigh the ability to repay them even *if* the operating costs were coverable.

For comparison:
London to Brussels
Approx: 370km
HSR time: 2:00
Ticket price: Generally approx £100-£150 return.
Competitive enough to destroy airlines on this route; only a few left usually primarily for connecting onward flights.

Sydney to Canberra
Approx: 280km
Potential HSR time: 1:21
As long as ticket prices are somewhere around A$150 return, I can't see any reason why it would be much different; it's far quicker then car or plane, direct to city centre, for the samish price, with a 5-10 minute "checkin" time with no security checks or luggage requirements (for reference, Eurostar rules are basically, as long as you can carry your luggage, you're fine, no trolleys allowed!).
 
For mine, it would have been the Speedrail concept between Sydney and Canberra as the downpayment on a Sydney-Melbourne HSR system. Whether the Canberra end is a stub off the mainline or a through route would be the next big question for Stage 2 from Canberra-Melbourne. The image below is a rendering of what the Speedrail's Sydney terminus might have looked like if Platforms 14 & 15 at Central hosted HSR. There would also be the question of how much the existing Sydney-Melbourne rail corridor could be improved by the significant amounts of deviation and realignment between Campbelltown and Gunning/Yass required by Speedrail.

1-letsgetmovin.jpg
 
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Australia is basically buggered for 300-350km/h trains, which is what people think of when HSR is mentioned. The HSR niche is city pair of a million people between 300-800km apart, and perhaps secondary cities of over 100,000 at least 150km apart along the route. Any less and the car is better and any more and flying is better. Sydney is more than 900km from both Melbourne and Brisbane and Adelaide is more than 800km from Melbourne. On top of that almost every inch of every potential east coast route is in the Great Dividing Range, meaning that almost every inch would be bridge, cut, earthworks and tunnels which is why we get astronomical costs like $100 billion for M-S-B merely to match not improve on what flying does.
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BUT!

What we can do is set our sights lower and drastically improve on what we have using shared but improved tracks and alignment and diesel tilt trains doing 200-220km/h. This would get journey times down from the curret ridiculous 11 hours to a much better than the car 6-7 hours and make it practical to service smaller cities along the route without impacting on an airline type speed target.

There have been enough deviations to current routes proposed over the years to make this practical and the cost is far more affordable, in the realms of 10s not 100s of billions.

This site goes into it, but with more of a regional focus.
http://hotrails.net
 
I think the Speedrail 1993 concept is probably closest to fruition; the proposal was backed by the Government, Sydney to Canberra is a workable short distance HSR which can safely beat the car and plane. Speedrail probably has to give more cast iron guarantees of no taxpayer funding, in return for maybe a little longer BOO model, and also the end of indirect subsidies for domestic aviation where applicable would help. Speedrail had an end to end travel time of 1:21 - something which is going to be heavily competitive after 9/11 and security checks etc (not to mention the city centre stations) - and is shorter then the flight time of 1:35 currently according to Google flights. Flight ticket prices of A$100-$150 look as though they should be beatable; a similar return train ticket of (say) A$150 for a shorter travel time, direct to the city centre, and with no security or luggage rules is going to win. You might also see Canberra Airport take up some slack from Sydney once the later becomes heavily congested too, which will entice some further traffic if some kind of air-rail codeshare can be worked out with applicable airlines.

Once you have Sydney-Canberra working and earning money, then you can separately begin to look at extending it to Melbourne, which is probably the only obvious extension which is remotely possible without government help. Brisbane & Adelaide would be nice, but construction costs are likely to far outweigh the ability to repay them even *if* the operating costs were coverable.

For comparison:
London to Brussels
Approx: 370km
HSR time: 2:00
Ticket price: Generally approx £100-£150 return.
Competitive enough to destroy airlines on this route; only a few left usually primarily for connecting onward flights.

Sydney to Canberra
Approx: 280km
Potential HSR time: 1:21
As long as ticket prices are somewhere around A$150 return, I can't see any reason why it would be much different; it's far quicker then car or plane, direct to city centre, for the samish price, with a 5-10 minute "checkin" time with no security checks or luggage requirements (for reference, Eurostar rules are basically, as long as you can carry your luggage, you're fine, no trolleys allowed!).

I can take the bus Sydney-Canberra for $80 return, travel time is 3-4.5 hours depending on traffic. Goes from city centre to city centre. A lot of people would prefer to take the HSR but will save the $70 I think.
 
I can take the bus Sydney-Canberra for $80 return, travel time is 3-4.5 hours depending on traffic. Goes from city centre to city centre. A lot of people would prefer to take the HSR but will save the $70 I think.

I doubt the bus is in the mix of competition for HSR market, its cars and aircraft that are the competition. Sydney CBD to Canberra is about 300km so a return trip in the car takes virtually a full tank of petrol costing about $100 for 7-8 hours behind the wheel. There would be plenty of people willing to forego $50 to save 2-4 hours travel time, particularly if they can do stuff like sleep or work.
 
Don't forego the ability to recharge your phone and laptop. Access free wi - fi and have a snack during the transit time.

The positives for high speed rail between Canberra and Sydney are reasonable, the problem arises if you want the terminal to terminate in the Sydney CBD. Then the costs start to escalate rather quickly, unless you intend to reduce transit speed.
 
HSR would at least shate easements with existing rail infrastructure and if it was shared lower end HSR it would actually share tracks. There is a myriad of ways to de-conflict fast trains from slow trains using largely shared infrastructure; eg, a simple 3rd platform in suburban stations gets suburban trains out of the way of express fast trains.
 
Not long after I discovered the AH.com forum, I wrote a post at a rail blog I used to run (http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/105003/20111113-0021/transporttextbook.com/indexf993.html?p=703) on 'what ifs' for Australian rail. One of the 'what ifs' that was most relevant to the potential success of the 1980s Sydney-Melbourne VFT concept was whether granting of Federal tax concessions to the VFT consortium would have been enough to get the project across the line and under construction:
What if the Federal Cabinet in 1991 had decided to grant tax concessions on infrastructure investment? Would this have enabled the construction of a Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne high speed rail link to go ahead? Would this hole in the Federal Budget (estimated at the time to be up to A$1.4 billion) have effectively killed off the Building Better Cities and One Nation urban public transport and interstate rail infrastructure investment programs (A$816 million and A$454 million respectively)?
letsgetmovin.jpg

Details of the VFT consortium are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Fast_Train_Joint_Venture
 
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GarethC

Donor
I can take the bus Sydney-Canberra for $80 return, travel time is 3-4.5 hours depending on traffic. Goes from city centre to city centre. A lot of people would prefer to take the HSR but will save the $70 I think.
My employer has got offices in both cities. To deploy Sydney staff to Canberra requires flying, because the bus means at least one lost billing day and the cost of an overnight stay (hotel and dinner), and more likely two.

HSR would make same-day travel for meetings or single-day engagements significantly more attractive than the ~AUD600+ to fly (and that's with early/cheaper flight).
 
My employer has got offices in both cities. To deploy Sydney staff to Canberra requires flying, because the bus means at least one lost billing day and the cost of an overnight stay (hotel and dinner), and more likely two.

HSR would make same-day travel for meetings or single-day engagements significantly more attractive than the ~AUD600+ to fly (and that's with early/cheaper flight).

I think you've hit the nail on the head for HSR's most contestable travel market between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne - the corporate travel market that isn't as sensitive to price as it is sensitive to time. The ability of Qantas (and Ansett/Virgin) to see off competitors on the most profitable air routes in Australia is the government and corporate travel contracts. If HSR competes strongly on CBD-to-CBD travel time then price can become the point of difference. The corporate dollar (and its infrastructure of loss leaders such as lounges and onboard food/beverage service) will build the base of service and quality to attract more price sensitive leisure travellers, some of whom (through the use of yield management and dynamic pricing) will forsake the $70 bus for an off-peak $250-$300 return fare SYD-CBR.
 
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Nobody is taking the bus on a work trip; its either driving for short distance like western Sydney to Canberra and regional destinations or flying. Government agencies and big corporations get bulk rates and smaller companies build up ff miles and status credits to cash in later, they don't guve a shit about a few hundred bucks in big deals.
 
Interesting, there are rumblings from the depths of Canberra that HSR is about to bubble up again. In other words, HSR is fulfilling its traditional role of a nation-building talisman for a government on the electoral ropes.
 
Apparently the Canberra - Sydney rail link is once more being mooted, this time by the NSW State Government.

This quote is taken from an article on ABC News.

The NSW Government last night revealed the plan, part of the $4.2 billion fund it said would be used for "transformational projects" in regional New South Wales to enable "faster and easier travel" between regional and metropolitan areas a key priority.
 
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Building a high speed train is often touted as a sustainable and environmentally sensible solution to the emissions and pollution problems caused by alternative forms of transport (especially aircraft). Would the construction of the high speed train line require much space outside the existing rail corridor i.e. destruction of bushland/farmland? We have to have electrically powered HSR in the long run, unless steam trains running on coal are brought back. 60% of flights into Sydney airport come from intra state, and the Sydney-Melbourne route is the most profitable air route in the world. The door to door time involved would make a high speed train very popular. NSW is a state with a state government; the Federal government is based in Canberra, which is in the ACT.
 
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